Saturday evening, minutes after the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) selected Regina MP Andrew Scheer as its new leader, a long-time Tory voter emailed the above question.

My friend is not actively involved in Tory politics, but he is a very well-informed citizen.

And the bad news for CPC strategists is, he had never heard of Scheer until the 38-year-old grabbed his party's top prize.

Why is that bad news?

Because if even an engaged voter has never heard of your new leader, then there is almost no chance ordinary voters know who he is. And that means your party has to start several squares back on the political gameboard.

Before they can engage the governing Liberals in any meaningful way, the Tories now have to introduce their new leader to Canadians.

For instance, did you know Scheer had been Speaker of the House of Commons for more than four years, up until the Tories were expelled from office in the 2015 election? The entire time the Tories had a majority, Scheer was Speaker.

That's a powerful, high-profile position. The incumbent is often well-known to the public, or at least to the kind of voter such as my friend who had never heard of Scheer until Saturday.

Scheer's predecessor was Liberal Peter Milliken. Before Milliken there was Gilbert Parent, John Bosley, Lloyd Francis, Jeanne Sauve and James Jerome.

Maybe they were bigger showboats than Scheer, but they were all better known.

The fact Scheer took 13 ballots to reel in frontrunner Maxime Bernier -- and then only beat him by about one percentage point -- also means his support among party members was good, but not stunning.

Scheer had the support of more than 30 members of the Tory caucus, a sign he is highly regarded by his Parliamentary peers. But among party rank-and-file, who used preferential ballots to cast their votes, he was something like everyone's fourth or fifth choice. Or seventh; or ninth.

It would be a mistake to underestimate Scheer.

He was first elected to the Commons in 2004 when he was 25, unseating New Democrat Lorne Nystrom, who at the time was the long-serving MP in the country and one of the most popular.

Scheer also is the youngest MP ever selected to be Speaker in any Parliament in the Commonwealth. Young people often get elected as MPs, MPPs or MLAs. But they don't get to leadership positions without some talent and skill.

And the fact Scheer was largely unknown as Speaker has a silver lining. It means he never fouled up in a big way.

He wasn't seen as especially biased or partisan.

He didn't create scandal and his rulings didn't generate headlines because they didn't outrage opposition MPs.

Perhaps a greater hurdle for Scheer than his invisibility problem (everyone who ran in the Tory leadership had an invisibility problem), is the perception of him as a social conservative, a politician whose faith turns him against same-sex marriage, abortion and gay rights teaching in schools.

This reputation is probably unfair. During the leadership race Scheer tried to position himself as a middle-ground candidate between the socially and fiscally conservative wings of the party.

However, in politics, perception has a way of becoming reality.

Socially conservative Tory members flocked to Scheer in the hopes of stopping the libertarian Bernier.

As Scheer tries to establish a name for himself, count on the Liberals to try to tar Scheer with the SoCon label.